It's a really exciting thing to collaborate with production designers, cinematographers and gaffers and costume designers and editors and composers.
— Jason Bateman
On the whole, a director who make the set a comfortable place to work is really important, whether it's a comedy or drama.
We had, like, the greatest time you could ever imagine doing 'Arrested Development.' And as grateful as we are for the careers we have afterwards, it was - we still miss it.
Not a lot of people get a second chance. And I think for a while there, my name kind of got in my way a bit, based on all of the television I was fortunate enough to do. But after a while, you sort of wear out your welcome in that genre, in that medium.
I'm looking forward to playing Michael Bluth many, many more times.
My family is pretty funny. My mother is British, so she's got a very dry sense of humor. That's where I got that from.
Directing films is incredibly exciting to me.
I don't want to be obnoxious with my ambition or sound like I expect any sort of entitlement here. Hollywood is not in the business of humoring people.
You hit those valleys sometimes and it's really frustrating. It's like getting stuck in traffic on the freeway. But there's not much you can do about it.
There's this little recipe that you have to hit pretty well to get somebody to laugh. And it's a combination of the way in which you say something, with the facial expression that you have, married with the body language that you have, etc.
I'm a pretty normal guy. I'm really good at knowing how a normal guy would react in situations.
I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.
I think NBC got a little reluctant to get behind single-camera shows after 'Scrubs' didn't do what they thought it was going to do following 'Friends.'
It was a blast. I was doing everything that teenagers do and everything people in their twenties do. I was playing as hard as I was working, which was an effort to really balance my life.
I'm not talented enough to drop everything and become somebody different.
The kids can't watch 'The Wire,' but there's great educational stuff for them to watch on TV if it is TV time. There are great apps on the iPad that are interactive and educational.
My father was a director and producer, so when I was a little kid, he would take me to movies and show me what's good and what's not good and why, and often that would take me to a conversation about directing.
I really like dramas that have a tone of comedy in them or the opposite, and those are done by people like Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman but also Spike Jonze and David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers.
Music is such an incredibly affecting part of any movie-going experience, and it just... it shapes your whole experience.
I look at whatever the finish line is for the character and then kind of act backwards from that and play him in such a way so that that finish line is more rewarding.
I think I'm actually much too shy to do any performance art. I admire the big swings those guys take, but I'm not a one-man band.
I owe everything to 'Arrested Development.' It just shows that everybody is kind of a job away from having relevance again.
Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.
My upbringing as a child was very atypical.
Actors are sellers, and I figured out a long time ago that if you wanted to work a lot, you had to be on the buying side.
That's kind of the fun part about acting. We do get the right to kind of get from A to Z any way we want, as long as we start at A and end at Z.
In most professions, if you stay at the office an extra four hours every day, you're gonna impress the boss. You're gonna get that promotion; you're gonna get that raise. You're gonna at least have job security. But with acting, if you're really ambitious and you have a good work ethic and are really good at your job, it might not really matter.
That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.
We had this neighbor who was an actor, and he was going to an audition one day, driving by our house, and he asked if I wanted to tag along. He was reading for the part of the father, and they were reading for the part of the son the same day, and he told me to sneak in there and make it look like I knew what I was doing.
You do certain things in your twenties that are just not appropriate in your thirties and certainly not appropriate in your forties. Eventually you even the scales, and it's time to move on and become an adult and start working hard again and going to sleep a little bit earlier. Fortunately, I got a job to facilitate that transition.
I was doing everything that a kid would be doing anyway, but on top of that, I was able to fly to different cities.
I'm never happier than in the bed.
I don't really find a problem with technology or television or anything. I'm a product of it. I grew up watching TV, and I don't think I'm too dumb or too crazy.
When you're playing a supporting character, you don't really have a lot of control of the quality of the film.
Actors, by very definition, we want people to pay attention to us, and so usually, that comes in the package of insecurity. So if we're not comfortable, we don't really show you a lot.
I enjoy editing when I'm directing, but when someone else is directing, that's their film to cut.
I was very surprised to get a reading for 'Arrested Development' because it really seemed to be the opposite of that which I was known for doing.
The people at Netflix are extremely intelligent about the way they monitor activity on their platform.
I really appreciate comedy a lot.
To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it's all-encompassing.
I haven't met a lot of 'Hogan Family' fans.
My father was a writer/director/producer, so instead of throwing a ball around, our bonding was going to see movies. And at an early age, I knew if I wanted to impress my dad, it was not going to be by throwing a ball real far.
You can say your lines a million different ways and play your character a million different ways and still hit the common, agreed-upon finish line.
If the goal is to be believable when you're acting, I've got the best idea of what that believability might look and feel like. And because you need a normal guy in a comedy so that the eccentricities can pop, that's a good part for me.
I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play.
I try to see everything I do. It's a good learning tool for me. You kind of remember what you were going for when you were shooting it, and then see how it comes across in the context of what comes before and after it.
If you make a mistake, people are going to know about it really fast - and I was making a ton of them when I was a kid.
You want 100% and 100% to make 200, instead of 50 and 50 making 100.
I really empathise with some of my peers who had success in the early years; then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.
I think the Internet is a huge positive.
